Why turnout at European elections keeps falling

The Financial Times - Britain's most Europhile newspaper - devotes an entire page to chiding voters for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the coming Euro-elections. Some of these lumpen oafs, apparently, are planning to vote for "Eurosceptics, Europhobes and populists of various stripes." Those who don't vote are scarcely less guilty. "A low turnout will cause particular concern if the results reveal an increase in support for anti-EU candidates", sermonises the Eurocrats' paper of choice. (This in a news piece, remember, not an opinion column.) Cause particular concern? To whom? To European officials, presumably. Note the way in which, in those pink pages, electorates must prove themselves to their leaders rather than the other way around.

To be fair, the FT is simply repeating received opinion in Brussels, where public opinion is viewed as an obstacle to be overcome, not a reason to change course. Lack of identification with EU institutions is not seen as an argument for the decentralisation of power; rather, it is seen as an argument for better propaganda, so as to wake the ignorant rubes up to all the wonderful things the EU is doing for them.

In the middle of the piece comes an unconsciously hilarious quotation from my friend Íñigo Méndez De Vigo, one of the chief authors of the European constitution. (No, really, I like him very much. He approximates the Englishman's ideal of the haughty hidalgo, but he's an Anglophile, a convivial companion and a genuine Euro-idealist. In an assembly with more than its share of time-servers, he is a rare conviction politician: even other Spanish MEPs regard him as an extreme federalist, and teasingly call him "Méndez de Frankfurt"). "It makes no sense at all," complains the good baron, "that when the European Parliament gets more powers, Europeans do not participate."

Joder,Íñigo, it makes perfect sense. The more people find out about us and our colleagues, the less they like us. Look at the turnout figures since direct elections were instituted 30 years ago:

1979: 63.0%

1984: 61.0%

1989: 58.5%

1994: 56.8%

1999: 49.8%

2004: 45.7%

Spot the pattern? The more powerful MEPs become, the less legitimate they appear in the eyes of their constituents. So how about this? Let's listen to the people, hand powers back to national legislatures, close down our assembly and return the savings to taxpayers.